Restorations   AVIGNONE

THE ORGAN

This valuable instrument, the object of genuine interest and sincere admiration in France, so much so that it is often familiarly identified by its appearance with the mere appellation of 'Orgue Doré' without further specification, still represents a landmark of 19th-century Italian organ building to this day.

A strongly characterising element of this organ, and an object of great astonishment, is its splendid and monumental gilded wooden case, in a style inspired by both Italian (the extreme linearity of the design, the classically rectilinear crowning, the shallow depth of the whole) and more appropriately French (the prominent central tower, supported by a corbel and surmounted by a large statue of King David the musician) aesthetic canons.

The instrument consists of a 54-note keyboard and 17-note pedalboard plus the roll pedal.
The chorister was found to be Hz 438 at 18° while the temperament used for the final tuning has 7 'waning' fifths and 5 'pure' fifths. The total wind pressure is 50 mm in the water column.

The major somiere is of the "a vento" type built according to methodologies and canons linked to the Lombard school with construction details linked to the Varese area. In particular: the doors of the dungeon are closed by means of wooden laths pivoted at the bottom (on the floor of the dungeon); The latter are fixed at the top to a specially shaped wooden structure (in the shape of a hook), the seal where the tie rods pass through the floor of the dungeon is guaranteed by a brass plate fixed with four small nails at the corners, the upper closure of the channels by means of a single strip of leather surmounted by a wooden "folder" with rectangular holes for the passage of the ventilabrini tips (the so-called Antegnatian type of somiere, which differs from the "borsini" type precisely because of this particularity).

The keyboard has walnut levers with ebony plating for the diatonic and ivory for the chromatic. The mechanism of the keyboard consists of iron bolts whose ends have been forged to be shaped as required. The bolts are anchored to the underlying spruce axle by means of double-turned brass strangles.
The registers are operated by wooden handcuffs with horizontal movement from right to left with notch locking. The handcuffs are arranged in two columns on the right side of the keyboard.
The manticeria is located in a special room at a lower level than the organ floor. The bellows have been completely reconstructed in the number of four; they are of the wedge type with five folds.
Wind generation is possible through three different systems:

1. by means of an electric fan;
2. manually by operating the bellows by means of wooden rods;
3. by automated drive, with special equipment that is partly electropneumatic and partly mechanical.

During the restoration, following a complete 'reading' of the instrument and comparison with archive documentation and publications, the following elements were reconstructed, as they had been removed in previous interventions:

1. Third Hand, which was originally connected to the 'throttle' of the Harmonic Basses can now be inserted with new pedal
2. Bass drum and cymbals, controlled by new pedalboard
3. Rolling, operated by the last pedal (the mechanics existed, the reeds were missing)